Self-sufficiency: NNDC begins manpower development in North

From Femi Oyelola Kaduna

Northern conglomerate, New Nigeria Development Company (NNDC) has embarked on massive manpower development especially among the youth in the region in order to make them self-sufficient and productive.
Chairman of NNDC, Alhaji Bashir Mohammed Dalhatu stated this in a statement at the 49thAnnual General Meeting of the company held in Kaduna yesterday.
Dalhatu said the company is earmarking reasonable resources towards promoting the NNDC Young Professional Development Trust (NNDC/YPDT), the NNDC/ICAN Students Special Project (SSP) and the Musa Bello Learning Resource Centre (MBLRC).
According to him, the various programmes have continued to produce professionals in the fields of Accounting, Stock Broking, Insurance and Information Technology. He disclosed that since inception of the schemes ten years ago, a total of 820 professionals have been produced.
The chairman informed stakeholders that the medium density housing estate which the company started in the second half of 2015 is almost completed.
He added that the housing estate, situated along Golf Course Road, Kaduna, consists of total number of 60 houses made up of 12 3-bedroom detached duplexes, 5 blocks of 2×3- bedroom semi-detached duplexes, 2 blocks of 4×3-bedroom terrace houses and 5 blocks of 4×2-bedroom flats.
“There are common facilities such as shopping mall, power house and boreholes. It is expected that the estate will be handed over to NNDC by the contractor in May, 2018 when all the outstanding works of final surfacing of road networks, general water supplies, commissioning of transformers and connection to national grid will have been completed.
“The company has earlier executed similar projects successfully. It constructed 10 Nos. duplex units of 3-bedroom semi-detached at Degel 2 Road and another 8 Nos. flats of 3-bedroom apartments each at No.32/24 Sultan Bello Road, Kaduna, bringing the total number of houses constructed so far to 78 units,” he said.
Dalhatu, however, said that the challenging business environment impacted on the performance of the company during the period as the it recorded an operating income of N747.11m against N898.56m in the previous year representing 17 per cent decrease.
“Also, operating profit before tax ofN138.25m was achieved againstN167.79m in the previous year representing 18 per cent decrease.
“Similarly, the company’s net asset for the year wasN9.19b against N9.41b in the corresponding year representing 2.2 per cent decrease.”